The Great Schlep

Funny site encouraging Jewish people to go visit their grandparents in Florida and convince them to vote Obama so Florida will swing the election. Watch the welcome video from Sarah Silverman (but not at work...if you've seen her comedy before you'll understand what I mean). At first glance the site seems like simply a joke but it's paid for by the Jewish Council for Education and Research, which is a legitimate organization that created the site Jews Vote.

The site's a pretty darn clever tactic to direct viewers, who may just end up viewing the video for laughs, to more serious sites that encourage voting and endorse Obama. Well done, JCER.

The Glass Castle

My mom bought this book and gave it to me, warning me that while it was a remarkable story, she had stopped reading because it was too depressing.

Jeannette Walls, the author of this memoir, is a journalist who had a childhood so dysfunctional, people would laugh at it as absurd if it were written as fiction. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother an unsuccesful writer and artist, neither of whom ever held a job for more than a few weeks at a time and forced their children to raise, feed, and clothe themselves from when they were toddlers. The story is intensely sad at times, chronicling poverty, neglect, and abuse. But it is also a fantastic comeback story. The Walls children persevere despite their crazy upbringing to make functional, even successful lives for themselves (with the exception of one sibling, about whose future Walls is more vague). Walls never has a woe is me tone, and she manages to find just the right balance between the pockets of humor and the depth and intensity of the family's dysfunction. I don't think Augusten Burroughs, author of the memoir Running With Scissors, achieved this nearly as fully when he awkwardly tried to make abuse into one joke after another.

Beavers Topple the Trojans

It's so wonderful to see #1 fall...especially when Georgia has dropped to #3 despite being 4-0 and USC being 2-0. Well, 2-0 until last night when Oregon State knocked a whole lotta air out of their inflated heads. I love it. Now onto Bama and the Blackout. I don't have tickets to the game but if the Blackout even comes close to the awesomeness of last year's Auburn game, which was the best game I've been to in my life, we will crush the Tide and skeezy Nick Saban.

Here's a slideshow of images from the game, featuring lots of happy people in orange and sad people in maroon and gold.

On Spanking

This is an excellent article from Slate about what science and psychology research says about hitting, spanking, or otherwise using physical punishment against children. The bottom line: it works in the very very short term but has a variety of damaging effects in the long term (both for the child and the parent). The author also points to a UN initiative toward a universal ban on violence against kids, including corporal punishment at home. Some other highlights:

• More than one-third of all parents who start out with relatively mild punishments end up crossing the line drawn by the state to define child abuse: hitting with an object, harsh and cruel hitting, and so on. Children, endowed with wonderful flexibility and ability to learn, typically adapt to punishment faster than parents can escalate it, which helps encourage a little hitting to lead to a lot of hitting.
• The negative effects on children include increased aggression and noncompliance—the very misbehaviors that most often inspire parents to hit in the first place—as well as poor academic achievement, poor quality of parent-child relationships, and increased risk of a mental-health problem (depression or anxiety, for instance). High levels of corporal punishment are also associated with problems that crop up later in life, including diminished ability to control one's impulses and poor physical-health outcomes (cancer, heart disease, chronic respiratory disease).
  
• If you hit another adult you can be arrested and sued, after all, so shouldn't our smallest, weakest citizens have a right to equal or even more-than-equal protection under the law? In this country, if you do the same thing to your dog that you do to your child, you're more likely to get in trouble for mistreating the dog.

Yard Dog Wine

I must be especially hungry today with two posts about food and drink. I discovered the Redheads Yard Dog wine at the Decatur Package Store, which does a great job of displaying descriptions, awards, and recommendations of wine. The fugly dog was what first caught my attention, and the price was the second ($12). I read the rave review and was sold. This was by far the best wine I've ever had for that price, and probably better than a number of those costing $25 or more a bottle. I'll leave the fancy-schmancy technical description of the aromas and tastes to the experts (or at least the wine blogger I link to above who seems pretty popular). If you can find this wine, snag several bottles and enjoy!

Boca Chik'n Patties

I've always liked the Boca veggie burgers for a healthier grilling option (though don't get me wrong, I love a real burger even more). I found these Boca Chik'n Patties (made from soy) recently and came up with an AWESOME, quick, and healthy-ish sandwich. I toasted two pieces of sourdough bread, from Publix of course, added the Boca patty, melted a little cheese on top, sliced a plum tomato, and spread a bit of wing sauce on the bread instead of mustard or mayo. DELICIOUS. I have found a new favorite easy meal.

Gossip Girl

My newest not-so-guilty pleasure. I thought all the good had gone out of the world once "The OC" rolled into a third season and started sucking something horrible. But oh, Josh, Schwartz, I knew you'd be back and better than ever at making high schoolers speak like cynical pop culture professors and dress like they walked straight off the runway at Fashion Week. The story lines, unsurprisingly, are very similar to those experienced by our dearly departed friends in Newport Beach. I'm two thirds of the way through the first season (so no spoilers please!) and so far I don't like it as much as "The OC," but it's still shamelessly entertaining. Dan Humphrey is no Seth Cohen and Rufus Humphrey no Sandy Cohen, but those two characters leave impossibly big shoes to fill (Converse sneakers and Brooks Brothers loafers, respectively).